African American news blog that features news that may get little or no coverage in the mainstream media

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Did the L.A. NAACP look the other way when it came to Donald Sterling's racism?

In the interest of full disclosure let me state that I am a member of the NAACP. I was not going to renew my membership until I heard Donald Sterling would not be receiving a NAACP award.

Now that the NBA has dealt with L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling it's fair to take a look at the LA chapter of the NAACP. Before they were outraged by Sterling's comments they were all set to give him another lifetime achievement award. ( I know he's old but how many lives has he had ) They were going to that despite Sterling's past when it comes to racism. They were essentially willing to ignore his racism issues. The question is why?

When all hell broke lose they announced that they would not be giving Sterling an award and would be returning money he had donated. Oddly enough they wont mention how much money Sterling has given. (wonder why?)

The LA chapter had to know about Sterling's past. You can make the argument that they were more aware of it than most in the United States being both in L.A. and well being the NAACP. When they were taking Sterling's money they knew who he was in my opinion.

The NAACP says that they asked about one lawsuit in which Sterling had to pay 2.7 million dollars to a fund for people who were allegedly harmed by their discriminatory practices. My guess is that Sterling's answer included a lot of zeroes.

In my opinion the LA NAACP had blinders on when it comes to Sterling's racism as long as the cash was flowing. Maybe I'm being cynical but being cynical doesn't mean one is wrong.